Why high-end resources need high-end devices

Elmari Keyser, end-user computing specialist commercial at HP partner Datacentrix, says businesses seeking to control costs need to look to tools that enable greater productivity, rather than just enforcing a budget ceiling on IT spend across the board.

"We often find that end-users are well aware of what devices they need to help them work faster and more efficiently. In the case of developers, graphic designers, architects, engineers or actuaries, this means workstations with dedicated graphics and high performance processors. However, they come up against IT budget constraints, and ultimately they are equipped with machines less suited to their roles."

This, she says, is a mistake. "In an age when time is money, businesses cannot afford to have their most expensive skilled resources sitting idle, waiting for applications to load or processing to take place."

Keyser cites, for example, AutoCAD operators paid by the hour, who are forced to spend many idle hours waiting on slow or outdated computers. "These high-end skills are expensive resources. If a company really wants to control costs, it needs to enable them to work faster."

Keyser notes AutoCAD is increasingly being used in 3D design, which adds to the performance demands of the tool. "This means you need computing power and an advanced graphics processing unit well beyond the capabilities of even the most high-end consumer device. This is where workstations come in." She notes that a workstation such as the HP Z230 SFF brings far more computing resources and reliability to the table than consumer PCs do.

An HP Z230 SFF 'value configuration' for AutoCAD, with an Intel Core i7 quad-core processor, delivers a mechanical drive that provides 1TB of data storage, and a professional NVIDIA Quadro graphics card. Meanwhile, an HP Z230 SFF 'power configuration' for AutoCAD offers an Intel Xeon E3-1241 v3 processor with 16GB of ECC memory, support for improved reliability, a higher performance NVIDIA Quadro K620 professional graphics card, and the HP Z Turbo drive, a PCIe-based SSD storage solution that offers up to two times the performance of conventional SATA SSDs to load applications rapidly, and speed through large data set processing.

Workstations will become increasingly important as 3D takes off, Keyser notes. "To be more competitive, a number of industry verticals are looking to 3D scanning and printing. Consider architects making scale models and printing them out, or the medical industry printing medical devices, for example. You simply can't do this using a normal desktop or notebook - in fact, 3D software is geared for use only on workstations."

In addition, big data processing will demand increasingly powerful machines, she says. "The financial industry, stockbrokers and actuaries are a good example. They cannot process huge amounts of data on your average desktop or notebook."

"Ultimately, the workstation should be seen as an investment in productivity. When you consider the ROI, it's a category worth looking at for high-end use," Keyser says.